«Ayahuasca la vista» – Johannes Willi and Benedikt Wyss

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«Ayahuasca la vista» is the title of the joint performance of Basel-based artist Johannes Willi and curator Benedikt Wyss with the Basler Fasnacht clique «Die Unbaggene» and Colombian artists David Escobar Parra and Camilo Pachón.

The series of performances took place in various locations in Basel in February 2018, during the local carnival called Fasnacht. The project was born out of Wyss’ field experiments, initiated during the Basler Dokumentartage 17 and Willi’s residency at FLORA Ars+Natura in Bogotá in 2017.

Willi reinterprets practices of the local carnival in his own style and had the clique wearing costumes and playing instruments that, in relation to the nature-driven theme, consist of natural materials, and so he and the clique embodied a forest walking through Basel’s city center. «Ayahuasca» la vista included the performance «Yypfyffe» at Kunsthalle Basel in the framework of the exhibition New Swiss Performance Now. It was a choreography of the traditional, usually intimate rite of initiation of the clique on the evening before the «Morgestraich» (the start of Basler Fasnacht) – performed with specially built instruments.

«Ayahuasca la vista» was curated by Claudio Vogt and Benedikt Wyss. It was also supported by the Christoph Merian Stiftung, the Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung. The project was launched with the exhibition «I like The Universe» at CRISPR Bogotá and will be continued at the Carnival of Barranquilla.